Tropical system expect to bring deluge to South Florida by Tuesday

Get ready for some summer-like frog-strangler rains at midweek, courtesy of a tropical system down in the Caribbean.

The two weeks or so on either side of Sept. 10 mark the height of the season, and the tropics certainly rocked-and-rolled during that period.

Today, with Matthew and Lisa now history, marks the first time since Aug. 21 — when Tropical Depression #6 became Danielle — that the tropics don’t host a named tropical storm or hurricane.

That, of course, doesn’t mean the season is over.

In fact, as forecasters have been warning for the last week or two, and as Matthew showed, now is the time of the season when storms mostly form not far out in Africa, but in the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico, making them instant threats to Florida.

And, as forecasters have been saying, the high-pressure ridge that’s been pushing Atlantic storms to the north is the same feature that could pull Caribbean and Gulf storms toward Florida as treacherous “back door storms.”

One of those potential storms is brewing right now in the northwestern Caribbean, and the National Hurricane Center’s 8 a.m. tropical weather outlook gives a 30 percent chance it will become a tropical depression, or Tropical Storm Nicole, by Wednesday.

While it’s “unlikley” it will become a strong tropical storm, it is expected to slowly drift north and bring heavy rains to South Florida as early as Tuesday afternoon, an area weather discussion by the National Weather Service’s Miami office said.

“It appears most plausible that two to three waves of deep moisture will advance across the region Tuesday evening through Friday,” the discussion said, with rains averaging — averaging — 2-3/4 inches.

The forecast is for six to 12 hour lulls between deluges, reducing the threat of localized flooding.

There’s another system out by Africa; it has only a 10 percent chance of forming in the next two days.